Tony Cokes: Testament E: MF.slow.cancel.2014

Batalha Centro de Cinema presents the first solo exhibition in Portugal by American artist Tony Cokes.

Awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2024, Cokes has presented his work in museums such as Haus der Kunst, MACRO and MACBA over the last few years. His films and installations propose a unique and sonically powerful visual semantics, based on texts and messages that reflect on capitalism, coloniality, consumption and other systems of power.

With vividly coloured images in which text takes centre stage, Cokes often places today’s popular culture in dialogue with critical texts that punctuate the discursive evolution of these subjects.

Testament E: MF.slow.cancel.2014, a new film that Tony Cokes created specifically for this exhibition, adapts a 2014 lecture by Mark Fisher (1968–2017), delivered at MaMA Zagreb two and a half years before his death, to explore the cyclical nature of 21st-century popular music and the “temporal malaise” of contemporary culture.

This eponymous exhibition centres on this work, while also revisiting other canonical films from his career.

The exhibition’s public programme includes a conversation between Tony Cokes and Kodwo Eshun, followed by a live act by Kode9 on February 15, 2025.

Programme notes by Guilherme Blanc (curator). More information at batalhacentrodecinema.pt.